Proposed Long Beach budget to include police academy

LONG BEACH — A police academy will be included in the city budget to be released next week, the office of Mayor Bob Foster has confirmed.

The Long Beach Police Department's last academy class of 20 officers graduated in April 2009. Since then, budget pressures have postponed more police recruiting.

Foster is expected to introduce the fiscal year 2013 budget by Wednesday. Long Beach must balance an estimated $17.2 million deficit.

Projected shortfalls in 2014 and 2015 are $10.9 million and $6.4 million, respectively.

Considering that, Foster's chief of staff, Becki Ames, said funding an academy to train more officers is easy in comparison to the ongoing expenses once they are sworn into service.

"There will be tremendous challenges to pay them in the coming years," said Ames.

Police officials have said that a new academy class of 17 officers would cost $1.5 million. It takes about two years from the beginning of the academy process to put an independently operating officer on the street.

The LBPD had a record high 1,020 budgeted officers in 2008.

Attrition has reduced rolls to about 815 now, and Police Chief Jim McDonnell said he expected the number of sworn officers to drop to about 760 by year's end.

Long Beach crime rates have declined steadily over the past decade, with 2010 hitting a 40-year low.

However, in 2011 Part 1 crimes, which include assault, murder and other serious crimes, increased 9.4 percent.

As of Tuesday, following four shootings that resulted in three homicides in a five-day span, the city has seen a 54 percent spike in killings and a 38 percent jump in shootings in 2012 over the same time period last year.

Details of the academy weren't revealed, pending the release of the budget.